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Trevor Thomas breaks all rules of being blind; long-distance hiking the Appalachian Trail saved his life

Dean Krakel

Special to the Denver Post

Posted:
06/24/2016 09:40:08 AM MDT

Updated:
06/24/2016 09:40:41 AM MDT

Blind hiker Trevor Thomas poses with his dog, Tennille, atop an overlook along the 489-mile-long Colorado Trail in 2015. Thomas is now hiking the Appalachian Trail. (Dave Baumgartner. / The Denver Post)

"Have you seen the blind guy? I heard he's out here on the trail somewhere." The hiker was asking Trevor Thomas.

"Haven't seen him," Thomas answered.

"Technically I wasn't lying," Thomas tells me. "I haven't seen me in a long time."

Truth is, none of the other backpackers Trevor Thomas and I will meet on the Grayson Highlands portion of the Appalachian Trail will see "Zero zero," the infamous blind hiker. Thomas is so far outside our perception of what blindness is and where a blind person should be — not out on the Appalachian Trail, for goodness' sake — the sighted don't see Thomas' blindness. What they see is a lean muscular guy cruising up the trail wearing a big backpack and a big smile, a wild shock of long hair sticking out from beneath his hat, a sweet black dog trotting on a leash beside him.

That's the way Thomas prefers it. In the woods, he's just another hiker.

And Tennille, his 5-year-old Labrador retriever guide dog, is just another adventure dog.

"Out here I feel normal," Thomas said. "Out here I'm just like everyone else. Nature is the great equalizer. It treats us all the same."

But Thomas is far from being the same as everyone else out here. Walking in an all-day rainstorm in the deep Virginia woods with him is more akin to walking with a savant than a blind man. Every so often I'll yell, "Hey, Trevor, tell me about where we are."

He stops.

"There's a rock wall on our right," he'll say, "and to the left, a drop-off and a valley with hills beyond. Water down there."

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He says it's the wind that tells him this. The air currents. The sound of things distant and far. Everything has a sound Thomas says.

"What you see, I hear," he said. "Every time I come out on the trail, my sound vocabulary grows."

The landscape communicates with him in an invisible language of texture, climate, temperature, sounds and vibrations, and Thomas — with all of his senses, his footfall and hiking pole — is listening.

Then there's Tennille, his constant canine companion. Tennille, who can sniff out Gatorade in Costco, in the woods finds trails and trail markers, water and sometimes campsites. Tennille stops at obstacles she deems unsafe, for which she gets a treat. She knows Thomas' height and warns him about low-hanging branches. Tennille vibrates with awareness, sees all, hears all, smells all.

"I'm the big-picture guy," Thomas said. "She does the detail stuff."

Together the pair navigates the trail with astonishing speed. Sometimes I break into a trot just to keep up.

"I wish you could see what you're walking down," I said to Thomas at one point during a slick, foggy, rocky, ledgy, ankle-twisting descent. "Actually," he answered, "I'm glad I can't."

Since losing his vision 10 years ago, Thomas has pulled himself up into the light from a dark well of depression and pain.

"I know what it's like being on death row in a self-imposed prison," Thomas said. "There was a door, but I couldn't open it. I'd wake up and just exist. I had nothing to do. No job. No place to go. I couldn't watch TV. Couldn't read a book. I couldn't even tell time without asking someone."

He was 37 years old and living in a small room in his parents' basement.

"People who were helping me cope with being blind basically told me all the things I couldn't do," he said. "Not what I could do. I was told that when I went outside I was never to leave the sidewalk."

An adrenaline junkie who mountain biked and raced cars and took crazy lines down mountains on his snowboard Thomas broke all the rules of being blind and "refused to live the way I was existing."

Long-distance hiking saved Thomas's life.

"On the Appalachian Trail, I walked into my life," he said of his solo thru-hike in 2008. "If I could do that, if I could walk from Georgia to Maine, I could do anything in my life. I could take control again."

Since then he has walked more than 20,000 miles on some of America's loneliest and toughest long-distance trails. Through his speaking, writing, blogging, sponsorships and foundation, Team Farsight, Thomas has created a unique professional niche that allows him to live alone in a house in Charlotte, N.C., and, most important, to hike whenever and wherever he wants, aspirations limited only by his imagination.

"I want to know what I can do. How far I can take things," Thomas said.

He does this for himself, but also sees his life as an example to others. Thomas rails against a society that he believes diminishes blind people, sees them as unemployable, teaches them not to adapt to the world but rather how to manipulate the system.

"When I speak to blind people who have already been indoctrinated into the system, I may as well be talking Sanskrit," he said. "The newly blind and kids, these are people I can reach. The funny thing is, when I do talk to the kids at one of my adventure camps the questions they ask, it's not about bears or mountain lions or rattlesnakes, things they're afraid of in the woods. They want to know if I live alone, if I have a job, how do I dress myself. I'll die knowing that I was able to make a difference in these kids' lives."

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